Korean Massacre Stories Questioned

May 13, 2000|By New York Times

A prominent and detailed news report last September that concluded for the first time that U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of Korean civilians in June 1950 has come under fire, with questions raised about two of the former soldiers quoted in The Associated Press report.

Army documents retrieved by Stripes.com, an electronic edition of The Stars and Stripes, which covers the military, and an investigation by U.S. News & World Report, question the credibility of Edward Daily, a witness in the original Associated Press investigation of the deaths.

The new reports state that he was not at the site, the No Gun Ri bridge, when the refugees were killed, but instead was serving with a maintenance unit miles away.

Daily was among those who told the AP that the shootings of civilians at No Gun Ri were carried out under orders. ``The command looked at it as getting rid of the problem in the easiest way,'' he said. ``That was to shoot them in a group.''

A second of the dozen witnesses quoted in the original AP report, Delos Flint, also was not at the bridge on July 26, 1950, when the shooting reportedly began, according to the new reports; they found he had been wounded and was already ferried off the battlefield.

Reached by telephone Friday, Flint stuck by what he told the AP. ``They told us to shoot,'' he said from his home in Clio, Mich. ``I told the other guys you can shoot all you want, but I didn't believe in it.''

But Flint said he could not remember much of what happened after he was seriously wounded in the fighting. ``I don't hardly remember being sent to the hospital, and I didn't remember anything for a long time after the war,'' he said. ``I do remember spending 18 months in the hospital at Valley Forge.''

ARMY CONFIRMS REPORT

Despite these discrepancies, senior Defense Department officials said Friday that an Army investigation has confirmed the central element of the AP report, that U.S. troops fired on refugees, resulting in what the Pentagon calls the ``tragic death of hundreds of civilians.''

The Pentagon would not comment on the scope of the killings, nor the duration of the shootings, while the investigation is under way.

The Army has concluded that as many as several hundred civilians were killed at No Gun Ri and is focusing on the orders given to the U.S. soldiers at the bridge, according to a senior Army official.

A senior Pentagon official said the Army has interviewed hundreds of witnesses, American and South Korean, and is examining thousands of pages of documents to discover whether GIs killed civilians accidentally in the heat of battle, whether they were ordered to do so, or whether they thought they were under orders to do so, as some of the AP witnesses asserted.

The lengthy AP investigation in September won two of journalism's most prestigious awards, a Pulitzer and the Polk. Numerous newspapers, including The Orlando Sentinel, carried the report on their front pages. And it prompted an investigation by the Pentagon, concerned about the impact on relations with an important Asian ally, South Korea.

AP OFFICIALS DEFEND STORY

The doubts about some sources are coming out about a month after the board of the Pulitzer Prizes awarded the AP its prize for investigative reporting, ``for revealing, with extensive documentation, the decades-old secret of how American soldiers early in the Korean War killed hundreds of Korean civilians in a massacre at No Gun Ri Bridge.''

In a statement this week and later interviews, AP officials defended their work, saying that Daily's account was not central to the original dispatch nor to subsequent accounts.

And they said they do not question the ambiguous and sometimes contradictory evidence of how the killings at No Gun Ri occurred - rather, they say, their reports reflected that ambiguity.

Kelly Smith Tunney, the director of corporate communications for the wire service, said Friday, ``The first question is what happened at the bridge. We have done extensive research and double- and triple-checked facts. And we're not apologetic about what we've done. It was all dependent on distant records and there were many ambiguities, all of which was in our original reporting.''

The Army refused to comment on the new evidence uncovered by the news organizations this week.

``In order to maintain the integrity of the No Gun Ri review, we will not address the accuracy of any press reports,'' Charles L. Cragin, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel, said in a statement. ``It is premature to discuss our findings until the review is complete.''

The incident at the railroad bridge near the village of No Gun Ri took place in the early days of the Korean War. Army commanders feared that North Korean infiltrators were among the refugees fleeing the fighting between the two Korean armies.